


We Would Shout and Swim About

by cursed_writer



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: M/M, first fanfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-28 00:08:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16712674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cursed_writer/pseuds/cursed_writer
Summary: Paul has been traveling to his private grotto to play songs for months now, just practicing for his mate, George, and his band. But when suddenly on unexpected less-than-human visitor with the very normal name of "John" appears by the sea side and asks about his music Paul's whole world is flipped upside down.





	1. That Man Over There!

Paul loved to sing by the ocean. The dancing of the water was very inspiring to him; much like how he loved to write his songs in the rain. The waves reached out to Paul, hoping to get their icy grip on him. He strummed on his guitar, the reverberations bounced off of the grotto walls, ricochet off of the high stone ceiling. He’d found the grotto awhile back and found it was the perfect place to play. No one else ever came around so he could compose in peace, it was like a private studio. The cave behind him didn’t go very deep, only about a, maybe, five yards? He liked to take advantage of the shallow cave and would sit at the back so he could sit in the dim lighting. It was total seclusion. Usually he would play a piece his mate George and him were working on for their group, he wanted to get good, he was a bit of a show off after all. Paul sung loudly the next verses of the song “Bright are the stars that shine, Dark is the sky, I know this, love of mine, Will never die.”

“Is that _all _you ever play?” Paul’s head snapped in the direction of the voice. He glanced around the short for a few moments before his eyes landed on a man’s smirking face. The man had his arms folded on a rock with his chin resting on them, the rest of his body hidden behind it. He had a fairly square jaw and an aquiline nose that added a nice curve to his face. His hair was damp, going to about the middle of his neck, a few strands stuck to his face as he tilted his head still smirking. What looked like a cigarette was held firm between his lips. Paul seemed to ignore the fact he hadn’t seen the man their when he first arrived nor had he heard him approach. All Paul seemed to focus on was that he had the nerve to criticize his song. Who did he think he was? _The Queen _?____

____“Oi! What’s that supposed to mean?!” Paul sent him a hard glare, the man only laughed in response._ _ _ _

____“You only seem to play love songs here and frankly they’re quite shite.” the man laughed, his thick eyebrows furrowing. Paul was very offended._ _ _ _

____“You have some nerve saying that to me.” Paul set his guitar aside on the sandy and rocky ground. He was careful to not get it too dirty._ _ _ _

____“Oh? Did I hit a nerve, my dear?” The man snickered, he liked to see the human get so annoyed._ _ _ _

____“How do you even know what I play if you’ve only heard one song?” He stated smugly._ _ _ _

____“Oh I’ve heard many of your songs.” The man pulled the cigaret from his mouth and blew out a thick cloud of smoke from what looked like his neck and mouth. Almost like something had opened to let the air out. Paul stared in amazement for a moment before quickly standing up, letting anger take over. He marched out towards the shore. He realised that to get to the man’s rock he would need to jump across a few large jagged rocks or wade through thigh high water. How did the man even get to the rock? Maybe he just swam, he did seem wet. Paul took another step closer to the water, his feet slid slightly._ _ _ _

____“Woah there, calm down.” the man chuckled as he raised his hands in surrender. Paul could see most of the top half of his chest, he was shirtless. Hopefully he wasn’t one of those creeps who likes to swim naked, Paul wasn’t sure if he could handle that. Paul decided in the heat of the moment that he was going to face this man right now, he rolled up his pants as high as they could go. He placed one foot in the water, a shiver raced up his spine, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. But Paul was too prideful to retreat now, he didn’t want to seem like a nancy. He placed his other foot in the water and began to move forward._ _ _ _

____“You really shouldn’t be doing that, mate.” Their was urgence in the man’s voice, fear? Maybe. Paul liked that, maybe he could just show this man who was boss and be on his way without having to hurt no one. As Paul slowly moved closer to the rock the man seemed to retreat further behind it. Just before the man had a chance to retreat to the water Paul made it to the other side of the rock. All expression fell off his face as he saw what looked like a tail disappear in the water. Now this wouldn’t normally be such a strange thing, they were in the ocean after all, the only issue was that this tail was connected to the top half of a man. It’s yellow scales shined brightly through the clear water, accent scales of blue, white, red, and pink were dotted across it. Paul stared in shock, his jaw went slack. The man, er, merman put his cigarette out on the beach then looked up at Paul with a slight smirk._ _ _ _

____“My eyes are up here, mate.”_ _ _ _

____Paul took a cautious step back, his foot landing on a rock slick with algae. A gasp escaped his mouth and he fell back into the icy embrace of the water._ _ _ _


	2. Come a Little Closer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John is just a salty bitch sometimes, I guess that's what living in the ocean does to you.

To say Paul was a bad swimmer was a bit of an understatement. Frankly, he couldn’t swim at all. Other than maybe the occasional dip in the pool at a rich relative’s house, he never got the chance. You might be thinking “he lives by the bloody ocean, shouldn’t he have some semblance of what it’s like to swim?”. Let me just tell you, it’s a bit hard to actually enjoy swimming when the sodding water is a cool forty degrees on a good day. Paul flailed his arms desperately as he tried to reach the surface, he would get so close when suddenly a current would pull him back down. He used all the self control he had left to not suck in water, his lungs were ablaze with sharp needles. His body, on instinct, tried to breathe in. Water flooded his lungs and windpipe, the screaming pain reared its ugly head even stronger. His vision was going a tad spotty as he made his final attempt to reach the surface.

Above the water the merman watched the spot where Paul had fallen, his bored expression slowly shifted into one of worry. Surely the lad would come up soon, right? He couldn’t just save him and expect the man to forget. The merman had let him see his tail after all, maybe it would just be best to let the man die? The creature tapped his claws on the cold rock for a moment, thinking. 

“Bloody ‘ell.” the mumble was barely audible as the creature dove into the water. Gills perked to life as a sense of calm washed over him. The yellow tinted fins on his arms and at the tip of his tail waved slowly in the current as he scanned the water for the man. When the merman’s eyes fell on the man’s slack figure he raced towards him without a second thought, his hair was quickly whipped back in the water. 

Paul’s face had started going a awful blue colour as he fade slowly into the darkness of the ocean. Emptiness was the only thing in his eyes as they stared on into the abyss. The merman quickly wrapped his arms around Paul’s waist and pulled him towards the surface. With a quick burst of energy the merman breached the water his gills snapped shut, he began hauling Paul’s limp body over to a his rock. 

“Jesus, how heavy can this man be?!” his voice was laced with fake annoyance as ,with great difficulty, he pushed the man’s body up on the rock before hoisting himself up next to him. “Haven’t worked out in awhile so let's see how fit I am.” The merman mustered all the strength he could and forcefully pushed down on Paul’s chest, a spurt of water was hacked up his throat. He pushed again, more water was pushed out. He continued with this, every push seemed slightly more urgent than the last, until no more water was willing to come out. Paul still hadn’t woken up. The merman thought for a moment, what did he normally see human’s do when one of them started breathing water? They usually tried kissing them, he wasn’t sure how that worked but it always seemed to make them come around. 

The merman opened Paul’s mouth slightly with his claws and stared down at him for a moment. “Shite, am I really going to do this?” he sighed, the conflicting voice in the back of his head whispered that he should just leave the man to die and forget this ever happened. He stared into Paul’s eyes for a moment, they were still empty, something deep inside the merman seemed to shudder at the thought of never getting a chance to see this man’s eyes lively and colourful again. After a moment of hesitation, he leaned down and connected their lips. Nothing happened, maybe he was doing it wrong? He pulled back and stared down at the man again. When he saw human’s do it, it looked like they breathed into each other’s mouths. So the merman filled his lungs before ‘kissing’ Paul again. He forced his breathe into the other’s mouth, once, twice, then a third time. Paul’s eyes shot open as he began to cough, the merman moved back, wiping his mouth off. Paul’s violent coughs echoed through the grotto as he struggled to breathe again. The merman stared at him with a fake expression of nonchalant-ness. What could he say? He could be an ass but it was nice to not have someone die on you...again. 

Paul propped himself up on his elbows, his breathing had finally seemed to slow down. “What happened?” his words were separated by pauses to breathe. His voice was very hoarse, it looked like it pained him to speak. With one hand Paul grasped at his chest, there would certainly be bruising from what the Merman had to do to bring him back. 

“Well, mate, seems as though you took a dip in the water but didn’t quite have the knack for swimming.” the merman laughed. Paul only glared. 

“I could have died! You think that’s funny?!” Paul was exhausted from the whole experience but he still could muster enough energy in him to fight. His outburst did cause his lungs to act up a bit, another coughing fit ensued. The merman placed a clawed hand on his shoulder.

“Ey, calm down, mate.” John didn’t notice how his claws scratched at Paul’s shoulder. Paul let out a small yelp as one of them scratched him the wrong way. John quickly redrew his hand “Sorry ‘bout that, seems as though this whole thing is a bit of my fault.” He laughed again “But I can’t be the only one to blame, maybe if you hadn’t marched over here you wouldn’t have almost died, hm? Then I wouldn’t of had to kiss you back to life to.” Paul looked at him in horror, his cheeks tinted a light shade of rose. 

“What do you mean by that?! How did you even reach me? I must have been pretty far under.”

“Well this may have helped…” the merman smirked at Paul as he lifted his tail from the water. There was no use hiding it now, Paul would find out one way or another. After saving this man’s life he just felt closer to him. Paul starred in mesmerization “My name is John by the way.” Paul’s attention was quickly draw away from the tail as he laughed.

“Your name is John?” he laughed loudly, coughing a little.

“Yeah, what’s it to you?”

“It’s just-” Paul paused as his laughter died down “That’s just such a normal name.”

“Well my mum thought it was exotic for merfolk so sod off.” John pointed a clawed finger at Paul.

“Wow, someone’s touchy.” neither of them said anything for a moment, Paul turned his attention back to John’s tail “My name is Paul.” he slowly reached his hand out to touch John’s tail but his hand was quickly smacked away.

“Someone’s feelin’ a bit cheeky, eh? Sorry, luv, but merfolk don’t even touch each other’s tails.” he smirked at Paul. 

“Why’s that?” Paul mumbled, still not taking his eyes off the tail and the way the sun glinted of the water droplets on it. 

“It’s a bit of a sexual thing, y’know.” Paul’s hand recoiled back. John simply laughed it off “That’s what I thought, not even other merfolk want to touch this tail.” he smacked his hand down on the shining scales.

“Why? Is your tail poisonous? Or does it have magic powers?” Paul seemed to be getting his hopes up, maybe John had some strange magical abilities. He would surely have to write a song about this later, his mates would think he’s mad.

“Nah, mate, it’s just ugly. None of the colours go together.” he picked at on of his scales as he spoke. 

“I think it looks nice.” Paul stammered out.

“You would.” John smirked as he rolled his eyes. “This is what my mum gets for getting knocked up by an ugly bastard like my dad.” he laughed. Paul out of curiosity suddenly placed his hand on John’s tail. The merman tensed up, a shiver running up his spine. 

“H-Hey! Hands off the merchandise.” John poked Paul’s hand with his claw but Paul didn’t move it, he just smirked.

“Why should I? Are you going to drown me again?” 

“That wasn’t my fault, man! I had to save your sorry arse after all.” John’s voice, for once, sounded actually annoyed. Paul was silent for a moment.

“Thank you. For saving me.” he rubbed his hand absentmindedly on John’s tail. The merman scratched at rock with his claws, his sharp teeth bit his lip.

“It was just the right thing to do.” John spoke through gritted teeth, he seemed distracted. Paul stared into his eyes for a long moment before his attention was drawn away by the glinting sun in his eyes. He looked over and noticed how late it was getting. Paul looked back at John, whose face was darkening to a shade of blue, he looked like he was holding something back. Paul stilled his hand rubbing against John’s tail.

“I should really get going.” He paused, in thought. “Will you be here tomorrow?” 

“Course I will, couldn’t miss your singing.” John mumbled, still distracted by Paul’s hand.

“I’ll be back then, we could actually talk, without me dying.” he laughed a little “I just need to put some ice on my chest and get a good night's sleep, I should be fine.” with that, he stood up, his soggy went close clung to him, they were beginning to get very cold. John looked up at him with what seemed to be surprise as Paul slipped back into the shallow water and began wading back to shore, a bit more elegantly this time. 

“You’re a damn tease, you know that?” John grumbled as he saw Paul crawl onto the land and grab his guitar. Paul only laughed as he walked away with a small wave of his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you guys liked this chapter! Please leave comments, they motivate me.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope Ya'll enjoyed this! Remember to comment!


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